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Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#101

Post by blub »

Kiro wrote: post #68
ziddoap wrote: post #34

I find it really interesting that when a company is making moves in a direction that benefits privacy of consumers, everyone takes the opportunity to shit on them for past mistakes or how it isn't good enough or why isn't it on by default or any other thing they can find to shit on. Yes, every single company has made mistakes. FireFox is no exception. Some of them were pretty egregious. Mistakes are - hopefully - an…

Pretty sure you would never say the same thing about Google.

So far Google have only made moves in a direction that damages privacy, so everyone would be too stunned to say anything in your hypothetical case.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#102

Post by simias »

ademup wrote: post #91
ChrisSD wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is they tried diversifying their income. But people don't want their browser to ask for donations (that's nagging). They don't want their new tab page pre-populated with websites on a new install (even if their browsing overwrites them). They don't want "fun" additions to advertise TV shows (even if they're opt-in). But they're happy to pay via google's search and tracking. Mozilla doesn't have a lot of opt…

Firefox has ~250M users as of about 9 months ago and $562M revenue for 2017. I'd honestly pay $2 per month (12 times "my share") for a Firefox that completely disavows the ad model and produces a truly user-centric experience sans ads, fingerprinting, etc. However, given that over 95% of their revenue comes from Royalties, I don't see that turning around any time soon.

I would too, but clearly most people wouldn't, otherwise advertisement wouldn't be such a popular way to monetize apps and websites (and Google wouldn't be the behemoth that it is today). Actually I would also gladly pay for a decent search engine but even DuckDuckGo decided to monetize using ads, which IMO means that sooner or later if they're successful enough they'll become just as bad as the rest.

Besides paying for a product doesn't mean that it becomes privacy-friendly, look at how Spotify still tracks your every actions even when you're a paying customer for instance.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#103

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

bloopernova wrote: post #39
Despegar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the stated reason but it's pretty weak to me. Safari hasn't had to make similar compromises.

When I switched to Firefox, I tried enabling uMatrix and strictly blocking as much as possible. My guess is that about half of sites had issues of one sort or another. So many load javascript from 3rd parties, or other domains under their control, that strict blocking quickly breaks the browser experience.

Decentraleyes gives you a local cache of 3rd party scripts that you need to keep activated. Otherwise, their content probably isn't worth viewing anyway if they're so bloated that they need to pull in 20+ scripts from across the net.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#104

Post by TheRealPomax »

ngokevin wrote: post #32
OJFord wrote: post #2

> You probably wouldn’t appreciate someone tracking your moves in real life. There’s no reason to accept it online. Great to read something like this on mozilla.org.

Kind of funny though, the vast majority of Mozilla's money comes from the ads and tracking industry, just one step removed.

And? I used to work for a defense contractor, using the military complex money to instead pay for civil projects that actually benefit normal people. You can take money that comes from "I don't like this thing", and then spend it on "this benefits everyone".

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#105

Post by StavrosK »

tadzik_ wrote: post #89

> At the top left of your Firefox browser, you will see an icon that looks like an i inside a circle. Click on it and then click on Content Blocking ...did anyone figure out what the hell that is supposed to be, or look like? Why wouldn't they just put a screenshot. Apparently they just mean the security settings and selecting Custom in those. Except it's on the right. And it's stripes, not a circle. shrug

Left of the URL on the URL bar is an information icon. Click that and click "custom" next to Content Blocking, or just go into the options at Security & Privacy.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#106

Post by StavrosK »

dessant wrote: post #94

Google's reCAPTCHA makes it impossible to use large portions of the web once you take reasonable measures to protect your privacy. The challenge will continuously fail, despite you spending time to carefully solve it. This cruel behavior is described in a patent [1] by Kyle Adams of Juniper Networks. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US9407661

The audio CAPTCHA always works first try for me. The image CAPTCHA can go eff itself, it would always take me five tries while the images loaded super slowly.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#107

Post by xvector »

Perceptes wrote: post #66
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17.62 bits on firefox, 11.0 on Tor, 17.63 on chrome. On firefox, the big contributors are HTTP headers (my native language is announced), hash of WebGl fingerprint and time zone. On Tor big contributors are hash of webGL fingerprint, screen size. On chrome, they are system fonts, hash of canvas fingerprint, user agent, and time zone. I am not too concerned about the fingerprinting in firefox since I have strict block…

Similar results for me. Does anyone know if it's possible to turn off WebGL, and if so, how? AFAIK I never use it for anything and I'd rather have increased anonymity. (Assuming disabling it prevents it from being used for fingerprinting.) Edit: Answering my own question. In `about:config`, change the `webgl.disabled` preference from `false` to `true`. This reduced the "bits of identifying information" from WebGL fro…

CanvasBlocker actually increases your track-ability because the consistent factor is now that you have a changing canvas fingerprint (which almost no one does).

This is why Safari tries to give a universal canvas fingerprint so you can "blend in" with other users.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#108

Post by floatingatoll »

Causality1 wrote: post #18

AdNauseam is an extension that clicks ads at random in the background, thus polluting your user data. It was useful enough to get banned from the Chrome web store.

It’s probably wise not to encourage interstate advertising fraud that the FBI might decide to investigate and arrest you for knowingly participating in.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90273549/fbi-and-google-take-dow...

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#109

Post by floatingatoll »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #92
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

17.62 bits on firefox, 11.0 on Tor, 17.63 on chrome. On firefox, the big contributors are HTTP headers (my native language is announced), hash of WebGl fingerprint and time zone. On Tor big contributors are hash of webGL fingerprint, screen size. On chrome, they are system fonts, hash of canvas fingerprint, user agent, and time zone. I am not too concerned about the fingerprinting in firefox since I have strict block…

The numbers don't make much sense to me. On FF I get 14.05 with NoScript active. Curiously the headers increase from 1.68 bits to 3.47 when NoScript is running.

NoScript is likely a valuable fingerprinting indicator, given that the vast majority of browsers have JavaScript enabled but you don’t.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#110

Post by abdullahkhalids »

xvector wrote: post #107
Perceptes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar results for me. Does anyone know if it's possible to turn off WebGL, and if so, how? AFAIK I never use it for anything and I'd rather have increased anonymity. (Assuming disabling it prevents it from being used for fingerprinting.) Edit: Answering my own question. In `about:config`, change the `webgl.disabled` preference from `false` to `true`. This reduced the "bits of identifying information" from WebGL fro…

CanvasBlocker actually increases your track-ability because the consistent factor is now that you have a changing canvas fingerprint (which almost no one does). This is why Safari tries to give a universal canvas fingerprint so you can "blend in" with other users.

I agree that a universal canvas fingerprint is better in principle, but practically who is going to write a script to search for all visitors who only differ by their canvas fingerprint and then identify them as one browser because the fingerprints are non-standard?
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